I was a web developer in a mid-sized company. My department, which ran a pretty large consumer web site, consisted of my boss and me.

My boss's main skills were in marketing--in fact, all he did was find people to cough up for banner ads. He was the CEO's younger brother.

He was completely clueless about the technology and proud of it. He held customers in complete contempt and blamed every technical problem on me (which wasn't fair: only half of them were due to me). He set ridiculous deadlines without an understanding of how long things would take, and rarely listened.

It got to the point where we were having shouting matches amongst the cubicles. Eventually I gave up and went over his head to the VP of Information Technology. I started to outline the problems as objectively as I could, but he cut in and said, "Well, frankly I'm surprised you've put up with him for so long. Nobody else in the office can stand him, and they don't even have to work with him."

He told me I was no longer allowed to talk to my boss. And then he brought my boss in and told him he was no longer allowed to talk to me. Someone from customer support was appointed to run messages between the two of us.

This, of course, was an absurdist situation, and would have been funny if it wasn't for how desperately unhappy this poor "runner" was. It went on for about three months, the atmosphere was terrible. I eventually resigned, much to the relief of the customer support guy.

When the VP's 'no-communication' edict came down, the CEO was on holiday. I tried to avoid him when he came back, but eventually he cornered me. He asked, "Is it true you're no longer on speaking terms with my brother?" I felt very sheepish and nervous, but said, "Well, yes."

I was working for a small family-owned company (the kind that are supposed to care about employees, right?) when my father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He did chemo and radiation in another state and I cheered him on from a distance.

Some months later the doctors decided the treatments were not working and there was nothing more to be done.

When i heard this sad news, I worked like a dog for a week to get ahead of my deadlines and explained the situation to my boss.

ME: So, can I take a week off to go see him?
BOSS: Well, is he dying right now?
ME: No, not yet, but he's terminal.
BOSS: But he's not dying now.
ME: No, but I'd like to see him while he's still lucid.
BOSS: If he's not dying right now, you can't take time off.

I thought I was misunderstanding something, so I explained again and told the boss that I had worked ahead of my deadlines, etc. He still refused.

Once I got a rather strange call from my boss asking if I had noticed "anything unusual" the day before. He said he had found a used syringe in one of the offices and they had already called the police and blocked access to the room. My boss started to interrogate me and my co-workers, apparently assuming that one of us had been doing drugs in there.

When I finally got access to the room, I saw that the "syringe" had a web address on the side. It was CPU thermal paste. A support person had been in the room the day before and hadn't disposed of the thermal paste needle.

It's funny how paranoid everyone is. Even when the news got out that it was thermal paste, some people still remained suspicious.
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